


What you had / and what you lost

by ninastirith



Category: Pacific Rim (2013)
Genre: a short angsty drabble, and of course their co-pilot doesn't even have leaving them alone in their hearts, bear with me, because of course nightmares are what haunts a jaeger pilot, i'm having massive feelings both abt raleigh and mako AND about raleigh and yancy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-02
Updated: 2014-09-02
Packaged: 2018-02-15 21:50:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 383
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2244597
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ninastirith/pseuds/ninastirith
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He keeps waking up, sorrow and panic tearing him apart, and she hopes that her arms can promise him salvation.</p>
            </blockquote>





	What you had / and what you lost

**Author's Note:**

> He doesn't know how to not stay broken.

 

He sits up suddenly in the middle of the night, screaming. His voice is raw, the sound etching its way through his throat and out in the darkness of his bedroom, hands clenching the fabric of the sheets. He's only barely awake, but it doesn't matter. He's never had to be awake to feel the pain.

 

The scream falters into shallow breaths, unfolding themselves over his lips dried by the cold Alaskan wind. His head spins and the tears stream down his cheeks, nose, neck... he's too tired to wipe them away. There's no point, anyway – he can already hear soft, swift footsteps announcing her approach. There's no point in hiding from her.

 

When she enters, his breathing still hasn't calmed down. He's panting and gasping, trying to control his thoughts but his head is a raging storm of everything that's happened in the past few weeks, and right there in the center the biggest loss that he won't ever have peace with, no matter how many years pass. His head falls in his hands almost involuntarily and he lets out a shaky sob. The door creaks softly as it swings open and she lands herself on his bed with ease after entering. She wraps her thin yet strong arms around his midriff, holding him as fully as her small body can master.

 

“It's okay,” she says in her light, delicate voice. He has only one word in his head, tearing everything else apart, so he says it.

 

“Yancy, Yancy,” he whispers. No hard edges, but it burns his throat, his mouth, his entire being aches with it. Her arms tighten around him.

 

“I know.”

 

It's true – she does know. More than he thinks. He'd probably never speak to her again if he knew that she's seen it all – how fully he loved, and how fully he lost. The way he misses the one he's lost in more ways than he should. It's an excruciating, painful longing, the kind of emotion that couldn't ever be hidden away in the Drift and now, when she holds him like this and he sobs into his sheets almost in trance, she feels it too.

 

So like countless nights before, Mako holds Raleigh, tightly, quietly, until the sun starts to rise above the dark tree line outside.

 


End file.
